Plymouth was the site of the first colony in New England, founded in 1620 by the Pilgrims, passengers of the Mayflower. In 1692, the town of Salem and surrounding areas experienced one of America's most infamous cases of mass hysteria, the Salem witch trials.[4] In the late 18th century, Boston became known as the "Cradle of Liberty"[5] for the agitation there that led to the American Revolution.

The most restrictive definition of the Greater Boston area is the region administered by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC).[16] The MAPC is a regional planning organization created by the Massachusetts legislature to oversee transportation infrastructure and economic development concerns in the Boston area. The MAPC includes 101 cities and towns that are grouped into eight subregions. These include most of the area within the region's outer circumferential highway, I-495. In 2013, the population of the MAPC district was 3.2 million, which was 48% of the total population of Massachusetts,[17] in an area of 1,422 square miles (3,680 km2),[16] of which 39% is forested and an additional 11% is water, wetland, or other open space.[18]

Notably excluded from the MAPC and its partner planning body, the Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization, are the Merrimack Valley cities of Lowell, Lawrence, and Haverhill, much of Plymouth County, and all of Bristol County; these areas have their own regional planning bodies. Bristol County is part of the Greater Boston CSA, as part of the Providence MSA.

The urbanized area surrounding Boston serves as the core of a definition used by the US Census Bureau known as the New England city and town area (NECTA). The set of towns containing the core urbanized area plus surrounding towns with strong social and economic ties to the core area is defined as the Boston–Cambridge–Nashua, MA–NH Metropolitan NECTA.[19] The Boston NECTA is further subdivided into several NECTA divisions, which are listed below. The Boston, Framingham, and Peabody NECTA divisions together correspond roughly to the MAPC area. The total population of the Boston NECTA was 4,540,941 (as of 2000[update]).

An alternative definition defined by the United States Office of Management and Budget, using counties as building blocks instead of towns, is the Boston–Cambridge–Newton, MA–NH Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is further subdivided into three metropolitan divisions. The metropolitan statistical area had a total population of approximately 4,732,161 as of 2014[update] and is the tenth-largest in the United States. The components of the metropolitan area with their estimated 2012 populations are listed below.

A wider functional metropolitan area based on commuting patterns is also defined by the Office of Management and Budget as the Boston–Worcester–Providence combined statistical area. This area consists of the metropolitan areas of Manchester, Worcester, Providence, as well as Cape Cod, in addition to greater Boston. The total population as of 2014[update] for the extended region was estimated at 8,099,575. The following areas, along with the above MSA, are included in the combined statistical area, with their estimated 2012 populations:

Greater Boston has a sizable Jewish community, estimated at between 210,000 people,[28][29] and 261,000[30] or 5–6% of the Greater Boston metro population, compared with about 2% for the nation as a whole. Contrary to national trends, the number of Jews in Greater Boston has been growing, fueled by the fact that 60% of children in Jewish mixed-faith families are raised Jewish, compared with roughly one in three nationally.[28]

The City of Boston also has one of the largest LGBT populations per capita. It ranks fifth of all major cities in the country (behind San Francisco, and slightly behind Seattle, Atlanta, and Minneapolis respectively), with 12.3% of the city identifying as gay, lesbian, or bisexual.[31]

^Mean monthly maxima and minima (i.e. the expected highest and lowest temperature readings at any point during the year or given month) calculated based on data at said location from 1981 to 2010.

^Official records for Concord were kept at downtown from September 1868 to April 1941 and at Concord Municipal Airport since May 1941; snow records date from December 1942. For more information, see ThreadEx

^Mean monthly maxima and minima (i.e. the expected highest and lowest temperature readings at any point during the year or given month) calculated based on data at said location from 1981 to 2010.

^Official records for Boston were kept at downtown from January 1872 to December 1935, and at Logan Airport (KBOS) since January 1936.[40]

^Mean monthly maxima and minima (i.e. the expected highest and lowest temperature readings at any point during the year or given month) calculated based on data at said location from 1981 to 2010.

^Official records for Providence kept at downtown from November 1904 to May 1932 and at T. F. Green Airport since June 1932.[44]